as good as gold! fun ways to use gold coins with Littles!

3 hours ago

Thursday, March 6, 2025

March! We’re happy to see you again!

It’s our first post this month

and we’re beginning to anticipate the arrival of Spring…

We hope you are, too!

When we think of March, we, of course, think of St. Patrick’s Day!

Leprechauns, rainbows and pots of gold…

As retired kindergarten teachers and GRANDS to our Littles,

we love a good theme!

Last year, we shared 17 ways to celebrate the upcoming holiday

with one idea for each day of the month leading up to the special day!

If interested, check out that post below!

17 St. Patrick’s Day Activities!

GRAND Ways to Celebrate with Littles!

In last year’s post, we shared a few ideas for using gold coins in creative ways.

Today, we’re revisiting PAST FAVES and NEW ones, too!

Are you ready to find out more?

Gold coins are so versatile and can be used in a variety of ways!

This time of year, you can often find inexpensive bags at lots of stores.

We’ve seen St. Patrick’s Day coins but also ones with a Mardi Gras theme!

(Gold, green, purple! Our Littles love them all!)

We always grab a bag or two when stopping by our local dollar store!

While the activities we are sharing are especially fun this time of year

they are equally engaging ANY time!

And, while we love the novelty of the golden coins,

most activities described below will work with regular coins or even poker chips!

Since our own Littles were infants,

both of us - Laurie and Laura - have enjoyed using gold coins with them!

Young Littles love to hear the sound coins make when you shake or drop them in a jar!

Infants can track the sound with their eyes as you move the jar around them

and you can vary how loud or fast you shake the coins!

Simple as that!

Here are a few more of our PAST FAVES!

Rainbow Coin Drop!

The photos above show this activity,

one we both did with our toddler Littles!

Your Little will love dropping coins into an empty Pringles can! We decorated ours with rainbow colors and we cut a slit in the lid.

An empty glass jar works perfectly, too!

In fact, look at Laurie’s Little P last week!

Dumping coins in and out of a jar

is so much fun when you are 16 months old!

CAUTION: Just be sure to watch toddler Littles carefully at all times so the coins stay out of curious mouths!

We still use this activity with our older Littles but now we count how many coins are going in the jar as we put them in!

Count the Coins!

Here’s a sweet memory from a few years ago when Laura’s Little L was a year old. We had fun counting together as she added coins to the pot and then, of course, as she dumped them out! (Look for her cheesy smirk in the middle of the video!)

Our Older Littles can have fun lining up coins next to shamrocks (or post it notes) that have numbers written on them.

Leprechaun’s Gold!

Let your Older Littles go hunting for gold as they practice identifying the ABC’s, numbers or the letters in their names. Fill a shoebox or plastic bin with paper shreds (or rice or lentils or...) and then add plastic gold coins - we wrote one letter or number on a sticker and added one to each coin (or, as another option, you could write letters or numbers on yellow circles of paper). You could even create a number, name or letter board for your Littles to look at as reference. As your Littles hunt through the paper shreds for coins, they matches each to the correct spot on the board. School age Littles will enjoy greater challenges like finding the coin with the letter that makes the /b/ sound OR find the coin with the number that equals 2 + 4 on it.

For Younger Littles limit the number of numbers or letters they are looking for to maximize success. Then add more coins to the bin and show more letters/numbers on the corresponding board.

Another Option!

Simply let toddler Littles hunt through the paper shreds to find those coins!

This year we’ve got preschool Littles,

so we’ve adapted and created a few new ideas to use with our gold coins!

Going On a Treasure Hunt!

Both Laurie’s Little D and Laura’s Little L love to play Hide-n-Seek!

Do you have a Little in your life who loves it as much as ours do?

We both took a bit of a different approach!

Check out both ideas below!

Little D’s Treasure Hunt!

Recently, Laurie set up a fun treasure hunt for her Little D.

First, we read a story about a leprechaun hunting for his gold, and when we finished I asked Little D if she wanted to hunt for some gold as well.

Since Little D is not reading yet, I created a picture treasure hunt for her!

Her job was to follow my clues to find the treasure… just like the leprechaun searching for his pot of gold!

SUCCESS!

My little Leprechaun found her pot of gold!

There were a few M&Ms hidden in that pot of gold as well!

And, then, of course, our treasure hunt adventures turned into MANY games of Hide-n-Seek!

This was a winner!

Little L’s Treasure Hunt!

Laura got back from a visit with her Littles earlier this week. Her GRAND BAG had a few goodies in it! Some may even look familiar!

I’d kept this game board (one we’d made last year) and I pulled it out for some early morning fun! Little L is getting really good at matching her letters, especially if I only gave her 5-6 letter coins at a time! When she’d finished that project, I picked ten letter coins and hid them while she covered her eyes! Then it was time for Little L to go in search of the letter coins!

This was a FAVE as we also played this game over and over again!

A Funny Story!

While I was in the kitchen making lunch,

Little L decided to hide ALL the ABC coins for me to find!

I wasn't quite as good at finding my pot of gold!

It took me/us a looong time to find all 26 letter coins!

Get That Gold!

Laura’s Little L loved this activity…

Pinching, grabbing and using hand-eye coordination

all great ways to build important fine motor skills!

My GRAND BAG also included a sponge, an exacto knife and a tongs (although this isn’t necessary)!. To set up this activity, all I did was cut several slits in a large sponge (I love these and had an extra one). I slightly dampened the sponge before cutting the slits with the knife.